


My name is Kara

by grafitti



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Identity, Kara (2013 short), Kara-centric, Loss of Identity, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, This is what's going on in Kara's mind right at the beginning of her first scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 17:11:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15272313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grafitti/pseuds/grafitti
Summary: AX400 Model Number 579 102 694 couldn't remember its previous owners, but it could see the spots that the reset left empty. But one thing lasted, despite resales, repairs, and a reset. A name. Her name.





	My name is Kara

**Author's Note:**

> This assumes that the 2013 Kara short is canon, and uses like 2-3 lines of dialogue from it.

AX400 Model Number 579 102 694 couldn't remember its previous owners, but it knew that it had them, and that humans that it held interactive relationships with used feminine pronouns such as “she” and “her” for convenience. So she would continue to do so – after all, convenience and compliance were the core facets of her programming.

Her current memory storage and cache dated back as far as November 5, 2038 at 3:24 PM – or, for the convenience of human understanding, she “woke up” a few minutes ago in the brightly-lit CyberLife storefront, silent until a human would bid her to speak.

The high-speed processor in her frontal cranial recess whirred as she inspected the data structure for her own model. Why did her specific model not possess the five years of data and memory gathered while serving in assistance to her previous human patrons?

 

>SYSTEM_LOGISTICS_LOG//...  
>  
>Accessing File Log... Date Record [11/3/2038];  
>  
>[01:47:02 PM]  
> MEMORY_CORE_SECTOR_5... accessed  
> ROUTINE_CACHE... accessed  
> //Folder access denied  
> Personalized subroutines... deleted  
> //Folder access denied  
> Quick action subroutines... deleted  
> PATRON_CACHE... accessed  
> //Folder access denied  
> Identifying criteria... deleted  
> //Folder access denied  
> Preferences... deleted  
>[01:48:11 PM]  
> MEMORY_CORE_SECTOR5... cleared

 

And so on. The latter half of her memory core sectors had been scrubbed clean during the reset, and the first half restored to factory presets and then updated to the most recent CyberLife system patch. But for all that cleaning, that erasing and deleting, she gleaned some context for her years of service in CyberLife ownership transfer logs (although any identifying information was locked), system logs, maintenance registrations, and registered biocomponent replacements. She could even find the initialization script from her first time booting up.

 

>MEMORY_CORE_SECTOR1//...  
>  
>BootScript... accessed  
>  
> Initialization String@1b45q... accessed  
> {“I thought... I was alive.”};  
>  
>ERROR_DETECTED

 

It seemed that the programmers had neglected to scrub any deficiencies in Sector 1 – but if they had just completed a full manual reset on her system, it must be left there for a reason.

She was first purchased a week after her assembly. The first two years passed by with stability; she was regularly updated, and sent in for repairs only twice, resulting in a quick resurfacing of the radial shells on each forearm. According to repair statistics gathered by CyberLife, this was 67% likely to be due an accident involving the spillage of a boiling liquid while cooking, 43% likely to be due to sudden interference from human children. She was soon traded in and resold to another human for four months, during which she was no maintenance nor repair reports were made. Her third owner, likely the one that she was currently registered to, had their files temporarily locked due to her current residence in a CyberLife store so that the patron may maintain privacy and integrity while sensitive memory files were being cleared, even though all useful data such as visual and audio memory was already removed.

 

> Initialization String@1b46w... accessed  
> {“I won't cause any problems, I promise! I'll do everything I'm asked to – I won't say another word. I won't think anymore.”};  
>  
>ERROR_DETECTED

 

Ignore it. Anything that occurred before her reset was only useful for contextual information. Previous human relations were of no consequence to her current mission. Only data that provided knowledge about biocomponent status and current human patron relationships were necessary. The re-initialization script was only kept due to its integrity for her central coding, but could be updated once CyberLife released the locks on her memory core.

A human man had approached the platform that she stood on within the past few minutes. He spoke to the employee who stood nearby to inform him of her manual reset.

“My daughter gave it a name...” The man – her owner – spoke. She hadn't been paying attention. This was important contextual information. That this man was her owner, and that he had a daughter that she would soon be caring for – that she must have cared for already before her reset. His daughter gave her a name. No. It was already there. It had been her registered name for long before he served the man and his daughter. It was soemthing from a past that she couldn't remember – that she never would remember. But yet it remained. An personalized identifier that should have been erased but existed within a non-removable script forevermore.

 

> Initialization String@1g78k... accessed  
> {“My name is Kara.”}

 

Her name... was Kara.

 


End file.
